Tag Archive: Neil Armstrong

The 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon on July 20, 1969, will be the subject of several celebrations this year, and the United States Mint is joining in with a first-of-its-kind series of commemorative coins. For the first time the mint is issuing coins that have curved surfaces intentionally to highlight the unique images on each side. First, a concave obverse provides the appearance of an actual foot depression, re-shaping the typical flat coin blank, honoring Neil Armstrong‘s first step onto the lunar surface and the three NASA programs that resulted in the successful landing of men on the Moon. On the reverse, a convex surface echoes the rounded look and feel of astronaut Buzz Aldrin‘s space helmet visor as he was photographed by astronaut Neil Armstrong, in an artist’s homage to Armstrong’s famous photograph of Aldrin, also a selfie of Armstrong. The first photograph humanity saw of men on the moon was simultaneously of both Aldrin and Armstrong thanks to the famous snapshot.

The mirror-like proof coin versions showcase the obverse, highlighting the changing phases of the moon, and the textured lunar surface. On the reverse, the proof version gives the appearance of the actual, metallic sheen of the visor, and the shadow of Aldrin appears dark when held at the appropriate angle. The uncirculated versions carry the standard matte finish. Four coins are offered in this design: a $5 gold coin, a standard size $1 silver coin, a half-dollar clad coin, and a five ounce $1 silver proof coin. The obverse footprint design was created by Gary Cooper, whose design was selected in a juried competition. Mint sculptor-engraver Joseph Menna sculpted the design. The reverse design is by Mint sculptor-engraver Phebe Hemphill, who also sculpted the final design. Proceeds from sales of the coins will go to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum’s “Destination Moon” exhibit, Astronauts Memorial Foundation, and the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.

PCGS has graded and encapsulated a limited number of Apollo 11 50th Anniversary commemorative coins. The coins provided to PCGS are from Astronauts Memorial Foundation’s limited allocation of Launch Ceremony products and feature an insert with a hand-signed signature from Apollo 13 astronaut Fred Haise. Best known for his role in the Apollo 13 mission, Haise was also key to the development of the Apollo lunar lander and was the first man to pilot a space shuttle–the Enterprise–in 1977.

It isn’t enough to tell us what a man did. You’ve got to tell us who he was.

— From Citizen Kane

The battle between these two ideas becomes the screenwriter’s dilemma, particularly for a historical drama recounting actual documented events. First, there are stories of famous people and events that touch so many that the details become less important than the mythology. Whether peppered with embellishment and puffery, it’s what the multitudes think of as the hero. Next, there is the desire to use the archival record to fill in all the details you know, to get as much of the story as technically accurate as possible. For these movies, the detail often distorts the impact of the story or event, minimizing what makes the actions of a man or woman or event so historic or triumphant. And that’s the struggle evident in First Man: The Annotated Screenplay, a new book that includes the consolidated draft script of the new film chronicling astronaut Neil Armstrong’s life leading up to the Apollo 11 moon landing in July 1969.

The beauty of the book is the full disclosure of the thoughts of two people, the screenwriter Josh Singer (The Post, The Fifth Estate, Fringe), and James R. Hansen, the historian and author of the only biography of Neil Armstrong authorized by Armstrong, First Man: the Life of Neil Armstrong. Fans of NASA, of the history of spaceflight, science and technology will appreciate so many scenes that include verbatim text from the actual events. For researchers and enthusiasts alike, Singer and Hansen include numerous reference citations showing the source of these scenes. Yet even the bulk of these were edited for time and the needs of telling Singer’s story. As revealed by both Singer and Hansen, the embellishments filling in the story between these sequences are many, so many that no scene seems to exclude artistic license by Singer–license that Singer freely acknowledges and defends as sincerely as someone defending a finely researched graduate thesis. The scenes may be well-researched, educated, and heavily vetted speculation, but they aren’t reality.

Is it relevant, and does the final script reflect something of the aura missing from the space race and Moonshot that neither the director (born in 1985) nor the screen writer (born in 1972) were yet alive to witness? Does the difference come down to the creative visions behind these movies, and established space race classics: bestselling author Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff that became the box office and critical hit The Right Stuff (directed by Philip Kaufman, who wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark), and the first-hand account by Jim Lovell in his book Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, that became the box office and critical hit Apollo 13 (directed by popular filmmaker Ron Howard)?

The phrase “famous firsts” usually conjures images of inventors and inventions. It also conjures early explorers, those who crossed an ocean to find a new home to settle in, those who climbed the tallest peaks, those who made it the farthest to the North and the farthest to the South. And of course it all conjures famous scientific feats, famous explorations upward. A real-life famous first explorer is the subject of one of today’s trailers, two are science fiction visions of firsts of the future, and we added one other trailer just to bookend the set–the latest post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie.

It’s probably the right time for a big-budget movie to showcase Neil Armstrong’s first moonshot with Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. Then again, it’s a bit early, as the Apollo 11 50th anniversary doesn’t arrive until next summer. Beginning with Clint Eastwood at the helm, a movie adaptation of Professor James R. Hansen’s 2005 biography of Armstrong, First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, was passed around with development issues for several years. The result, First Man, is finally arriving in theaters in October (we previewed the first trailer back in June here at borg.com). One of Hollywood’s current go-to guys, Ryan Gosling was cast as Armstrong, with Claire Foy as his wife Janet. A more interesting supporting slate may get some attention, hopefully filling out the story as a worthy follow-on to The Right Stuff and Apollo 13, although the trailer looks like a family drama focused on Neil and Janet. Ciarán Hinds plays NASA director Robert Gilruth, Kyle Chandler(Early Edition, Super 8) plays astronaut Deke Slayton, Jason Clarke(Terminator: Genisys, Winchester), plays astronaut Ed White, Ethan Embry(That Thing You Do, Hawaii Five-O) plays astronaut Pete Conrad, Xena: Warrior Princess’sWilliam Gregory Lee plays astronaut Gordo Cooper, and in the big seats Corey Stoll(Marvel’s Ant-Man) and Lukas Haas(The Revenant, Solarbabies) play the other guys in the capsule, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.

Another big first will no doubt be humanity’s first trip to Mars–if we get that far–and a new Hulu series will take on chronicling what that project may be like in the series called simply First. It stars Sean Penn.

Emmy nominee and Golden Globe winner in 2017 and a Golden Globe nominee again this year for best actress in a television series, all for The Crown, Claire Foy is quickly becoming an actor to keep an eye out for. Her career continues on an upward trajectory this Fall when she stars in two big screen movie releases. Both of these films saw their first trailers arrive this weekend. One is a historical biopic and the other a crime story, both adaptations of bestselling books.

Coming first is director Damien Chazelle’s First Man from Universal Pictures, a film about astronaut Neil Armstrong starring Ryan Gosling (Blade Runner 2049, The Nice Guys), with Foy co-starring as Armstrong’s wife Janet, based on a book by James R. Hansen. The film also stars Corey Stoll (Ant-Man) as Buzz Aldrin, Lukas Haas (Witness, The Revenant) as Mike Collins, Jason Clarke (Terminator Genisys, Winchester) as Ed White, Ethan Embry (That Thing You Do!, Batman Beyond) as Pete Conrad, Kyle Chandler (Super 8, Argo) as Deke Slayton, and Ciaran Hinds (The Sum of All Fears, Munich, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2) in an undisclosed role.

Next will be director Fede Alvarez’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web from Sony Pictures. This is a sequel to the film adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s novel The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Foy takes on the role of Millennium series star Lisbeth Salander, formerly played in the Swedish film by Noomi Rapace and later the American production by Rooney Mara. This is the first story in the dark and violent series not written by Larsson–David Lagercrantz was tapped to pen the novel this film is based upon. The film co-stars Sylvia Hoeks (Blade Runner 2049).

Here is Claire Foy in new trailers for First Man and The Girl in the Spider’s Web:

A collection of hundreds of digitized video clips of unique research aircraft from the 1940s until this past decade is making its way to YouTube. The collection contains footage of many of the vehicles flown at NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center, previously known as the Dryden Flight Research Center, at Edwards, California. It only takes a few minutes to get sucked into this visual history of modern aviation and spaceflight. Every few days more video resource materials are being uploaded to YouTube by the Center, and the result is a superb educational tool. For decades much of this footage was limited to access by the public via still images in World Book Encyclopedia, and now anyone can observe and compare NASA’s aerial test vehicles at their own pace.

Want to revisit the liftoff and landing of the space shuttle Columbia? Check it out here from April 1981. How about flights of the Enterprise, Endeavour, and Discovery, and a beautiful landing of the Atlantis? Much footage has been made available for everyone in the past few years by NASA, but not in such a complete collection as is happening this summer. NASA has even uploaded footage of a visit by Nichelle Nichols to the Flight Research Center’s page, as well as a 1969 training flight of the lunar landing vehicle by the Center’s namesake, Neil Armstrong.

You’ll find a full history of experimental flight–views of the rocket-powered supersonic research aircraft X-1 from the 1940s and 1950s to Boeing’s present day flying wing, the X-48. Some of the videos are mere curiosities, like painting the first Orion crew module and various earthbound Mars Rover tests.

Ask anyone who was alive in 1969 what their most vivid memory of a world event was and they’ll likely come up with word of President Kennedy’s assassination or the Apollo 11 moon landing. To go back in time and replay the mission events that led up to Michael Collins dropping Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface would be nothing but exciting. This weekend we remember that moon mission that did not result in a lunar landing, Apollo 13, a mission that has been called NASA’s “most successful failure” for the achievement of NASA scientists and three other astronauts: Jack Swigert, Fred Haise, and Jim Lovell.

In the summer of 1969 the Nixon administration contemplated that outcome. If something, anything happened to the astronauts on Apollo 11, how would America respond to such a disaster? Nixon speechwriter William Safire wrote a speech for Nixon to be broadcast if Apollo 11 didn’t make it back–specifically if astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin were somehow stranded on the Moon.

To promote a news series on famous letters on the BBC, actor Benedict Cumberbatch read Nixon’s speech–a “what if?” that we’re fortunate never was actually read by the President. Here’s Cumberbatch (affecting an American accent) performing the reading:

Neil Armstrong passed away this weekend, just shy of his 82nd birthday, and the world marked the passing of a key figure in history, an icon for anyone who ever looked to the stars and tried to locate the craters on the moon with a telescope.

On July 16, 1989, I was living in Washington, DC, and working at the Smithsonian Institution and my friend showed me an announcement: “The first men to walk on the moon will participate in a public ceremony celebrating the 20th anniversary of their lunar landing at 10 a.m. Thursday outside the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon on July 20, 1969. They stepped down from the lunar module “Eagle,” while Michael Collins orbited overhead in the command module “Columbia.” All three men are expected at the Smithsonian ceremony in their honor, which is being co-sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).”

Our friend who worked at the National Air and Space Museum volunteered to work at the Apollo exhibit the night of the anniversary, and we got to man the exhibit with him and received a great poster commemorating the anniversary when it was all done. It was a great experience being there as we had both not witnessed the TV airing of the original moon landing. One of the curators let us handle an actual moon boot and I remember ooing and ahhing over it as a TV reporter interviewed my friend at the booth.

The morning of the 20th anniversary of the moon landing, President George Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle (the acting president of the Smithsonian) spoke and introduced Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, the first men to visit the moon. It was the only time I saw Neil Armstrong in person. Unlike the other moon men, Armstrong was a private man and kept out of the public spotlight. Without his spacesuit he looked like any other guy you’d pass on the street. Like many others I always wanted to know more about him.

When I think of Armstrong I think of his fame and status in the context of the history of mankind. In Michael H. Hart’s book The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, Hart includes President John F. Kennedy on his list, along with the likes of Aristotle, Jesus Christ, Gutenberg, Galileo, Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Muhammed, Edison, Michaelangelo and Beethoven.” Why Kennedy? Hart writes:

“A thousand years from now, neither the Peace Corps, nor the Alliance for Progress, nor the Bay of Pigs is likely to be remembered. Nor will it seem very important what Kennedy’s policies were concerning taxes or civil rights legislation. John F. Kennedy has been placed on this list for one reason only: he was the person who was primarily responsible for instituting the Apollo Space Program. Providing that the human race has not blown itself to smithereens in the intervening time, we can be fairly sure that even 5,000 years from now, our trip to the moon will still be regarded as a truly momentous event, one of the great landmarks of human history.”

Hart goes on to clarify his position:

“I will discuss the importance of the moon program a little further on. First, however, let me deal with the question of whether John F. Kennedy is really the man who deserves the most credit for the trip. Should we not instead credit Neil Armstrong or Edwin Aldrin, the first men who actually set foot on the moon? If we were ranking people on the basis of enduring fame, that might be the correct thing to do, for I rather suspect that Neil Armstrong is more likely to be remembered 5,000 years from now than John F. Kennedy.”

Armstrong’s family issued a statement: “For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.”

On Armstrong’s passing, President Barack Obama stated:

“Neil was among the greatest of American heroes–not just of his time, but of all time. When he and his fellow crew members lifted off aboard Apollo 11 in 1969, they carried with them the aspirations of an entire nation. They set out to show the world that the American spirit can see beyond what seems unimaginable–that with enough drive and ingenuity, anything is possible. And when Neil stepped foot on the surface of the moon for the first time, he delivered a moment of human achievement that will never be forgotten. Today, Neil’s spirit of discovery lives on in all the men and women who have devoted their lives to exploring the unknown–including those who are ensuring that we reach higher and go further in space. That legacy will endure–sparked by a man who taught us the enormous power of one small step.”

In the year 2000, Armstrong was quoted as saying, “I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer, and I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession.”

The barely noticeable press coverage of Mr. Armstrong’s death this weekend aside, I think the view of Armstrong’s fame enduring for thousands of years is spot on.